


luck and laughter

by Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Bail lives, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friendly Bickering, Gen, Hoth (Star Wars), One Shot, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, hanleia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:13:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23033773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome/pseuds/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome
Summary: On Hoth, Bail tries to give his daughter some advice.
Relationships: Bail Organa & Han Solo, Bail Organa & Leia Organa, Leia Organa/Han Solo
Comments: 5
Kudos: 67
Collections: HanLeia Challenge





	luck and laughter

Hoth, Leia thinks, is getting under her skin. She’s been uncomfortable for a week now, with symptoms that seem to have reached a crescendo today. Her heart races, her breathing is too… loud? Could breathing be too loud? She’ll have to ask Threepio, again, to check his DataMD account to diagnose her new symptoms, even if he always tells her that she is perfectly healthy. And worst of all, Leia can’t seem to stop blushing, as if she’s feverish, in every meeting she’s had with the captains who assembled at the base this week before their next missions.

It’s why she stormed out into the hallway, only a little while before, leaving Luke, Wedge, and the others, including that damned Captain Solo, to wrap up their mission reports without her.

It’s why she’s currently sitting on a storage cube, half-fuming, half-re-diagnosing herself with any number of ailments.

And it’s why, despite him speaking to her for the last three minutes, after encountering her sulking (in his words) in the hallway, Leia hasn’t been listening to whatever her father had wanted to discuss.

“Leia?” Bail asks.

“Hmm?” Leia’s attention has gone elsewhere, now that the meeting room door is open and the captains are dispersing.

Bail sighs. “You didn’t hear a word I’ve said, have you?”

“I, uh,” had been staring at Han while he’d discussed something with Wedge Antilles. No, not staring. Of course not. He’s just an animated person who is amusing to watch. 

“You are so much like your mother, sometimes.”

“Thank you,” she says automatically.

“In this case, that is not a compliment,” Bail chuckles. “Though in so many others it is.” There’s a soft moment, where both of them feel the pang of loss, knowing that Breha should be here too, that it isn’t fair she, along with so much of Alderaan, had been destroyed by the Death Star. 

The plan to destroy the battlestation had come, just a little too late, for most of the planet. They had evacuated what they could, but they had still lost so much.

“How am I like her, then, at this moment?” Leia tries to turn her thoughts away from grief. She feels its constant pull, threatening to drown her, far too often. Sometimes she feels she might never laugh again, if she lets the grief take her too deeply. Sometimes, she thinks that it’s already too late, that she has felt too much loss, and will never be truly happy again.

“She was very, very, stubborn.”

“I am not stubborn.”

“Then this planet is not cold.”

Leia lets out a bitter exhale that she tries to pretend is a small bit of laughter. But it’s no more laughter than this base is a home to her.

“You all right?” the former senator, turned Rebellion leader, sits by his daughter. His long blue parka dusts the snow covered hallway floor, reminding Leia that she really needs to touch base with the technical crew about the base’s heating problems. 

Then, down the hallway, Han throws back his head and laughs. It’s that sound of wild delight, of complete and utter willingness to devote himself to all the good feelings of a moment of joy, that only Han can make.

Leia wishes he would laugh more around her like that. She wishes _she_ could make him laugh like that.

No. She shakes her head. No, she doesn’t wish that at all. It’s not that she wishes ill on the captain, it’s simply that his laugh is very distracting and…

“Leia, mija, you must be cold,” Bail says, taking off the vest that lay over his parka and wrapping it around her shoulders. “You’re shivering.”

“I’m not…” she shakes her head again, trying hard not to notice the way Han leans against a wall. He’s so relaxed, so comfortable.

“Perhaps you’re ill?” her father offers the suggestion softly, as if remembering the countless times his daughter would run and hide from any mention of illness or medicine, once squeezing herself into a dura-glass-wall cabinet and remaining hidden for over an hour. Leia, nearly twenty years later, is still rather proud of that hiding spot, even if she did still have to take the cough medicine when she was found. 

“I’m fine, Papa. Truly. Let’s go back to talking about the hallway heating elements, yes?”

He laughs, and the sound is as warm and welcome as sunlight. Bail Organa’s laugh features in almost all of Leia’s fondest childhood memories. “No, dear, we were not at all talking about that. We were…”

“What are we talkin’ about?” Han Solo himself has approached, sneaking up on her in that impossible way of his. There should be no way he could be this quiet, given how _loud_ he is at all other times, and yet, he is just far too skilled at sneaking up on her. “Princess. Senator.”

“Don’t call me that,” both Bail and Leia say in perfect harmony.

Han laughs again. He laughs like he spends credits; carelessly and without fear of the future. “Well, I’m glad to have run into you, your worshipfulness.”

“I assume you’re referring to my daughter,” Bail begins. There’s mirth in his voice, a playfulness Leia hasn’t heard in a while. “And not me, given that I much prefer _your majesticness.”_

Han snaps his fingers, “you got me, Bail.”

“You can’t call him that!” Leia nearly hops to her feet with her sudden insistence.

“Why not?”

“He’s… he’s my papa!” She’d meant to say father. She truly had. And yet, somehow, the sweet childish endearment had burst out instead.

“In that case,” Han doesn’t miss a beat. “Would Mr. Organa suffice, sir?” There’s a change in Han’s tone, a gentle sort of almost… deferance? Could Captain Solo sound humble? Wonders might never cease.

“Depends on why you’re asking.”

Han ruffles his hair with one gloved hand, suddenly seeming… different. Still humble, and now, perhaps even more impossibly, he seems _shy._ Han clears his throat.“I was wondering, Mr. Organa, uh, sir, if I might invite your daughter over to the Falcon for a hearty meal of Corellian Three-Pepper Stew.” 

“You smug little nerfherder…” Leia’s blush heats her cheeks. “Why, in the name of all the stars, do you think I’d have dinner with you, on that crumbling pile of junk you call a ship?”

Han grins, that impossible, beautiful grin that suggests he’s somehow won a game she’d never even agreed to play. “Lucky guess.”

“Why you…” Leia trails off, scooping up snow with one hand, and then, as quickly as she can, pelting Han with a snowball.

He lets the hit land, the loosely packed snow crumbling into his dark hair, which he shakes out like a mooka might, carelessly tousling his already-messy locks.

Leia’s blush is somehow worse, now. Her father lets out a small laugh. Leia glares at him, which earns her just an eyebrow raise. 

Bail clears his throat. “It seems to me that if this nice young captain wishes to invite you to dinner, you should at least decline without insulting his ship.”

“Nah,” Han rubs the back of his neck. “Wasn’t an insult. Probably kind of true, really.” He lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “I’ve heard worse.”

“Hopefully not from my daughter.”

“Papa!”

Bemused, Han rubs his chin. “She called me a flyboy and shoved me into a garbage pit… then there was that time…”

“I just…” Leia speaks up, ready to defend herself. Only, it suddenly appears to her that she has no logical defense, no rebuttal to his words. “It’s true,” she mumbles.

“Eh, see?” Han waggles his eyebrows.

Leia, despite herself, giggles. Only for a moment, only long enough for the sound to echo in the hall, before she stops it, pushing her joy back into the durasteel box it needs to stay in as long as the war lasts.

Han winks at her. “Dinner then, your highnessness? We’ll send leftovers home for you, Mr. Organa.”

Somehow, Leia nods. She’s not sure why she’s nodding, or why she’s even having this conversation, but she nods.

In return, Han’s grin doubles. He lets out one final chuckle, then ambles down the hall, away from them. Leia's gaze follows him, just a little too closely. It's so frustrating, how he makes her heart race, her blood pressure spike, her face turn red. Everything about Han Solo is frustrating and impossible and truly, knowing him is worse than simply being sick. Because unlike when she was a child, there's no place to hide, no way of avoiding these feelings she keeps trying to pretend are symptoms, no place to go that she thinks Han won't find her. He's impossible but she's not sure she wants him to be any other way.

“I like him,” Bail says, once the captain is out of earshot. “I think you’ll enjoy dinner.”

“What? Papa, why would you say that?” Leia's voice cracks in her surprise.

“Because,” Bail replies, leaning against the wall, a smile spreading over his otherwise tired face. He’s looked tired so often, Leia knows, ever since they lost Alderaan. At least they hadn’t lost each other, though grieving the rest of their family seemed to be a pain that would perhaps never heal. “Because, my dearest, he happens to have an ability I consider very important.”

“What’s that?”

“He happens,” Bail closes his eyes, as if lost in memories, “to make you laugh.”

“But Papa, he’s a smuggler with a debt to a crime lord who just happens to make me laugh.” Leia tries to point out the facts her own father seems to have forgotten,

“And you’re a princess with an inheritance who just happens to be in love with him.”

For the first time that day, Leia stills. Her racing heart calms, her breathing returns to normal. She feels warm, all of a sudden, and content. Strange, to hear the truth spoken by her father, when she herself was so in denial. “How did you know?”

Bail winks, and in that wink, she realizes that her father is a great deal like that maddening, impossible smuggler. That both of them make her laugh, calm her down, support her in every way they can. Tapping his daughter’s nose with the tip of his finger, just to make her laugh as he always has, Bail says, “lucky guess.”


End file.
